Issue 7

Chanel
By FRANCESCA MARCIANO It was early September, the air still balmy, the perfect weather for a Venetian escapade. Caterina and Pascal were sitting in a café across a canal divining their future, in a quiet campo off the beaten track, away from the tourists and the film crowd who had invaded the city for the festival. They sipped their frothy iced cappuccinos, basking…
A World of Wonder
By ELVIS BEGO In Copenhagen there is a street that on certain days looks, feels even, like Sarajevo. Kingosgade, or Kingo Street. The same sootiness, the frayed composure. Kingo was some white-ruffed Danish giant of piety and poetry centuries ago. Like everybody else’s in those days, his neckpiece looked like someone had smashed a platter over his head and he never got…
Spindrift
By W. ROSS FEELER 1. The mortician had trimmed the chaos of hair that had once sprouted from the ears and nostrils of Colton’s grandfather, but a single black arc of eyelash still lay like an unmatched parenthesis atop one bratwurst-colored cheek. Colton licked his thumb, as if readying to turn a page, touched the eyelash, and then studied it against the…
from SANKYA
By ZAKHAR PRILEPIN That winter they hired a small bus—Mother had suggested that Father should be buried in the village. Where he was born. Sasha hadn’t argued. “What do you think, son?” asked Mother in a completely unfamiliar tone. Until then, there had always been a man’s voice that had the final word in the house. Now, that voice was dead.…
The Last Word
By ARIEL DORFMAN “Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible.” —miguel de unamuno Monday, april 17. When you finish reading the last of these seven letters, you will be dead. Oh, not right away, my enemy, my friend. There are still many pages to be turned, many words to be devoured. You will receive one…
Plugs: Thoughts on Cady Noland's Stocks
By DAVID BRESLIN “Hell, there are no rules here—we’re trying to accomplish something.” —thomas edison i there were seventeen witnesses for the first execution of a human being by electrocution. William Kemmler, a sometime peddler of produce and a heavy drinker, was sentenced to death on March 29, 1889, for killing his common-law wife, Matilda Ziegler, with a hatchet. There…
Without
By MARISA SILVER When I was seven years old, we moved from Cleveland to New York City. I remember when my parents announced the decision to me and my two sisters. We were eating dinner at the aluminum kitchen table of our suburban home. Their tone was excitingly conspiratorial. They told us not to tell anyone just yet, not until plans…
Bud
By NALINI JONES for Cliff and Pete Somewhere in the attic I have letters from Bud, typed on a real typewriter and sent to me when I was in high school and college. The letters chronicle the adventures of his terrier and on occasion were written in the dog’s voice. The dog used to wait for his chance—when the man was sleeping…
In Search of Božena Nmcová
By KELCEY PARKER Once upon a time there was a girl named Božena. She grew up in a small village where she loved to gather strawberries and play in the fields. As a teenager she was given special permission to visit the castle library, where she read romantic books and dreamed of a future filled with love and literature. She was…
Your Parents' House
By ZEINA HASHEM BECK Your parents grow older, perhaps old. The same conversations, yellow like the walls, not all the walls, do not exaggerate. Repetition, yes, is a woman with curly hair, you find her there, hands in her lap. The scent: you wonder how something intangible could hold. You like the certainty…
Toast
By MANOHAR SHETTY To Nissim Ezekiel Friends, brothers, sisters, wellwishers And our esteemed guests from foreign, Today we welcome to our humble Abode in Navsari, Gujarat, a precious Addition to our family, Our daughter-in-law Emily Curry Hailing from Lankasire, UK. On this auspicious day Miss Emily, Now Mrs, has tied the knot Of holy matrimony With our youngest Mahess. …
Little Chapel
By RICHIE HOFMANN How do I know this stark room, the wooden chair, the antique book in its lap, the drawers lined with cedar, the two folded shirts, his and mine, the map of the Mediterranean World in a frame, its sea faded turquoise? Have you come here too? Is this a place you recognize? Richie Hofmann is the…
The Harbor
By RICHIE HOFMANN Afterwards everything whitened like paper or breath— The room was suddenly anchored to itself, the chains stopped groaning. I knew I could not leave with you. The sea outside was like the sea on the map. A sea-god was blowing into a crosshatched arc of sails. Richie Hofmann is the recipient…
An Opera With No Libretto
By GEORGE LOONEY This rough bark’s gray, lit up, separated from the dark by some distant lamp. A single wren collapses into its own admonishment of grays. A still life, this study of the loss of color that accompanies the diminishment of light. The visible, fading, makes us long for color enough to make it more than…
Folk Magic
By VALERIE DUFF We are following the hearse, the body in the hearse steady as a tree, Not my father any longer jagged timber, skidded from the world. Winter face, eyes tight, reject the earth. Ground, rough out Arabian night, let him drown in trunk and sap. Hoofbeats hover on the chintz. Hands, upend the…
Birds of Rhiannon
By KATHERINE ROBINSON Bring me the birds of Rhiannon— the ones that rouse the dead and make the living sleep—to entertain me that night. —The Mabinogi Ram skulls I brought home from the fields line the wall and survey the borage that has spread wild up by the house, its flowers blue and star-shaped, stamens sharp and black as…
Jesus and the Herd of Pigs
By SARAH M. WELLS They scampered as if the devil was herding them off the ledge, each one following the others, grass trampled black, muck up to their perfect hams ready for the knife, packing salt, and market. It happened. I saw the mud spray up their faces, heard the whole pack panic, charge, dash, splash and go under, hooves…
Jumping Roofs
By DAVID LIVEWELL The younger junkies, for a thrill, would toss Each other roof to rowhouse roof across Thin alleyways of light, a game whose loss Might match addiction. One slip and you’re there Halfway and falling fast. They straddled air With shrieks and crazed delight. We had to stare To justify such suicidal…
Erasure
By DAVID LIVEWELL High up on fire escapes the schoolgirls clapped erasers, chalk dust floating in a cloud, the words and numbers scripted by the nuns freed to autumnal treetops. Often girls would stamp their names in chalk on the brick walls, reminding us, like ashes, “dust to dust.” Beneath this task the cemetery slept, the Celtic crosses propped like dolmens…
The Coondle Elegies
By JOHN KINSELLA 1. Bobtail skin—fat and flexibly crisp—shucked in a roll of fencing wire in the red shed: not dead the bearer of dead skin, expanded even. Not quite an elegy of living into habitat reduction. What kind of contradictory or ecstatic or emphatic elegy is this? At this precise point, Tracy said a car from the loop racing…
They Had Had It In Mind
By CAROLINE KNOX They had had it in mind to adopt a retired whippet, which would have been easy for a retired ballet dancer, if she had been one, and easy on the wallet for him, an actuary. But she was a pellet- and-woodstove saleswoman. They looked at a basset. They looked at…
Dissolution (Or, Landscape With Martyr)
By JAYDN DEWALD Afterward, he watched her lumber out of the coliseum Swinging the severed head of his panther— All that talk about Madrid and his old Segovia albums And look what good it did them. Outside, In the pomegranate dusk, she flung the panther’s head Into the sidecar of her sepia ’57 Triumph And roared, her…
Fugue: Two Painters
By: JADYN DEWALD “The garden is here in the middle of your bedroom,” she tells him, unbuttoning her mandarin orange blouse, then giving up and raising her arms in the manner of (he thinks) the Spaniard before Napoleon’s firing squad. He steps toward her and lifts the blouse over her head. Kisses her throat and full, pale breasts. The Third of May…
Henri Province in Wessex
By JOSEPH HARRISON Now, when the thatch-roofed cottages Send up their puffs and curls From heating folk and pottages, And steadily thickening swirls Of snow-feathers settle, limning Lintels and mullioned panes, And door lanterns waver, dimming, And rusty weather vanes Creak as they flip directions like Befuddled gyroscopes, A chilling bleakness…
The City
By BRUCE BOND Let us say you are. You are the girl who, looking out her window to the city, takes on the grey pallor of the day, the way some lizards take on the green shade of the season they are in, so close to the garden the garden…
MR.
By NICHOLAS YB WONG He taught me about empires, got spotted in a ferry leaning almost too close to a man in the same tee. People like us traveled a lot, often with grist to unravel the abutments of risky fabric, practiced the Barbarian Invasion, fought from a hetero shore to the less hetero soil. It was science…
When I Was Straight
By JULIE MARIE WADE I did not love men as I do now. I loved them wincing & wanting to please. I loved them trying too hard. The world was an arrow pulled taut, pointing toward an altar. I was blushing & bashful, but never a bride. There were little things,…
When an Old Classmate Learns I Am a Lesbian
By JULIE MARIE WADE “Oh my God! I knew it! I always knew it. I was like Julie is so gay, & people were like oh, whatever, you just think everybody’s gay because it’s an all-girls school, but I knew I wasn’t gay, & I knew most of those girls weren’t gay, so I was like fuck you, Jasmine, go suck…
In Praise of Prey
By LESLIE MCGRATH The rhythm of predation is a sine wave. Between predator and prey it winds like a whip-crack in slow motion. The time has come to praise the prey who fill the guts of the never-satisfied for whom winning is all, and nothing. Praise the squeak and the telling tremble. Praise their begging and their…
Shook Music
By LESLIE MCGRATH Follow me, Imagineers! We’ll make noise from these dread instruments, shook music loud as the hell we’ve climbed from, visible only to the i in piano, the eye in the oboe. We’ll hoist a cheesecake by an iron hook and swing blindly at it with our puny claws. We’ll howl under its influences, meet cute fuck,…
The Common Statement
1. The sidewalk in front of my house unfurls enticingly to the north and south. Though its seams have buckled after months of gravel and salt, the walk still leads me to my neighbor’s porch, where I pull eggs and goat cheese from the fridge, take honey from the shelf, and leave cash in an unlocked box. The snow- and ice-narrowed…
Con
By STEPHEN O'CONNOR We decided to start with a con. She was small, with blonde hair and an unidentifiable accent that gave her voice the warped vowels and ee-haw rhythms of a handsaw. She approached him on the footbridge, made a startled noise, and looked down. His eyes followed hers, and there—exactly midway between them—was a golden ring. She picked it up…
Excerpts from Bud and Sanky
Today, we are publishing excerpts from contributors Nalini Jones and Jeff Parker in anticipation of the Issue 07 Launch Party this Sunday. Join us for a Spring fete of live literature and music featuring readings by Jones and Parker! BUD by Nalini Jones for Cliff and Pete Somewhere in the attic I have letters from Bud, typed on a real typewriter and…